The Trading Post was working last night for me! (not for everyone, but around 15% of the player base at random times). One thing that sucked was I lost all of my 50 silver ore. I posted them but they just disappeared, not in my bags, on the trading post, or as coins in the pickup tab. They just flat out vanished!

Alright, let's discuss selling Dyes and some good news for anyone who has left their dyes undiscovered.

First off, yes, dyes were the most expensive item I could sell on the Trading Post last night. Players don't have a lot of money right now, even level 80's, so it's difficult to make more than a handful of silver for even the best items pre-level 26 (where I'm at currently).

I was able to sell Unidentified Dyes for 9 silver each last night. When discovering the dyes that I had picked up in the first 26 levels of play, I quickly realized that I was wasting money by revealing the name of each dye. Instead of making those discoveries, I could have had steady income just from selling the unidentified dyes.

Of the 12 dyes I had found leveling to 30, only one was yellow quality, the rest were white, green, or blue. None of those white/green/blue quality dyes were selling higher than 2 silver. The yellow one is listed for 20 silver. Instead of making over a gold for those 12 dyes, I was stuck with around 40 silver!


If you have the opportunity to gamble by identifying dyes... don't. Sell them as unidentified on the trading post instead. They sell really fast to boot!

I predict that these dyes will only go up in price as players have more disposable income to spend on these and other vanity items.

First Trading Post Gold!

How did you make out on the Trading Post? Were you able to access it? Did you sell dyes?

Weapons appeared to be great sellers as well, and I even bought a dagger for 5 silver because it was awesome for my level. I'll be trying to sell whatever greens I don't personally wear as I continue to level (instead of sacrificing to the mystic forge in the hopes of upgrades).

The following exploit / trick / abused game mechanic / farming strategy / whatever you want to call it was emailed to me by Caliaana of Dark Serentiy Gaming. Here's what she sent me... it's epic!

"Right here, on the map for Gendarran Fields Level 25-35:

Guild Wars 2 Bug Farming Spot

This is the area where my guild master has been walking around on the map. There is a Supply Cart on a 30sec - 1 minute respawn timer. It has various crafting materials drop. In 5 minutes my GM filled his bags with random crafting necessary items. There are level 28 Centaurs around the area, but most are out of range so you shouldn't aggro. So just stand and wait and loot, instant crafting items for very low effort.

Hope you like ;)

~Caliaana"

My assumption is that this strategy will not last very long. I would use it as much as possible before the Guild Wars 2 team changes it to drop less loot or perhaps a much longer respawn timer. Or maybe they'll leave it alone and this will be the greatest way to get crafting materials for disciplines at this level of the game.

Have you noticed the Trading Post seems to be going on and off tonight? I've watched it turn on and off three times in the past two hours. Each time it turns on I'm only able to search one or two things before it goes back down for maintenance.

My guess is that they are attempting to update their code and servers to handle the incredible number of players entering the game. Each time they think they can handle the stress, a wave of players using the Trading Post bring the system back down to its knees.

I don't know how long it will take for Guild Wars 2 to get its Trading Post up and running, but I do know this:

Trading Post Sales from John Smith GW2 Economist

Crafting materials are going to be dirt cheap until the over supply from everyone hoarding materials the past four days gets bought out. It will be a tremendous opportunity to buy lots of crafting materials and boost your disciplines past the first two tiers of recipes.

If you are somehow rolling in gold at the moment, you could buy out early crafting materials just to relist them in the coming weeks or even months. Once we're all level 80, these copper ores and soft wood are going to be worth far more! But until then, expect this over supply to drive prices into the dirt... I mean copper!

Use the images below to find ore at the following waypoints in Queensdale:

1. Phinney Waypoint
2. Godslost Waypoint
3. Vale Waypoint

I have found as many as 13 nodes using this method with on average two of them being rich!

If you're looking for a way to farm lots of copper in Queensdale then this is the farming route you'll want to use.

I'm not sure how rare strawberries will be in Guild Wars 2, but I did find a terrific spot for gathering them. The mountain ridge that overlooks Wizard's Fief has tons of strawberries! See image:

Strawberry Patch Farming Spot

To get here, you have to take a little trip west from Cereboth Canyon. Monsters are level 19-20, but they are all melee so ranged should be able to clear this out even as low as 17. I was able to run past all the mobs and once I jumped down the cliff none of the enemies followed me down. You will have to jump down to the view (red triangles) to get the last of the strawberry patches.

The Trading Post is still down for maintenance but once it comes back online I'll have a big collection of strawberries ready to sell!

Here is how I'm discovering new recipes on my Weapon Smith at low levels.

1. Craft the two necessary components to build a weapon or shield. For example, Brown Sword Hilt and Brown Sword Blade.
2. Go to the discovery tab and add your two components plus an inscription piece.

Then you end up crafting something like this:

Weapon Smith Discovering Mighty Bronze Shield Recipe

Once the Trading Post comes back online, I'm hoping to make some easy coin with these recipes. If that doesn't work, then I will craft the components and just sell those. That way I can still gain levels in my disciplines and make coin with the final or semi-final products.

I love that you can just right click on any item and check for a price on the Trading Post. Epic!

Servers were relatively stable for the first day, and I am thoroughly enjoying the "3 Day Head Start" which we all have to admit is really just the official launch. I have to believe that the vast majority of people who want to play Guild Wars 2 bought the game before it was released. So the sort of official release is currently doing moderately well for an MMORPG launch. I say relatively well due to servers not being playable from hour 3 to 9 after release, as well as a completely unusable Trading Post.

Most players saw this when they attempted to use the Black Lion Training Post:

Error 502 Web Server Received an Invalid Response

Which is a shame, because right now I could see a whole bunch of crafting materials selling really well if people could just open up the Trading Post!

As I suggested yesterday, get your gathering tools ASAP when playing Guild Wars 2. I'm talking about as quickly as you have enough copper to buy the copper tools required to gather from resource nodes like plants, trees, and minerals.

While questing, you'll come across areas like this one that are filled with resources!

Farming Spot

Why do you want the copper tools to start gathering? Because crafting is a super easy way to level! I wouldn't recommend trying to level from 1-80 on crafting alone, but it really does speed up your time. Remember to purchase items from vendors so that you can craft additional items. Just look up what each item takes to make that you start with and you'll see requirements which only the nearby vendor can provide. You'll need to pick two crafting professions before you can see these options.

Once you start crafting, you'll be able to discover recipes like this one:

Recipe Discoveries in Guild Wars 2

Why do I care so much about the Trading Post being offline at the moment? 2 Reasons:

1. It's the point of this blog.
2. You can right click on any crafting materials and choose "buy on trading post." Fast and easy way to invest your gold into leveling both your character and two disciplines.

I started playing Guild Wars 2 two hours ago, and the Trading Post has been down the entire time.

When I click on the Lion's head at the top left corner and open up the Trading Post window, this is all I see on the "sell your stuff" tab:

Guild Wars 2 Trading Post Down

So I went out and bought some Copper Tools while I waited for the Trading Post to start working.

This is launch day, so bugs are to be expected!

However, when I right click on an item and choose "Sell at the Trading Post", the Trading Post opens correctly! I can then choose my items I want to sell.

But all is still not well in Trading Post land, as I still cannot seem to get an item to sell. It just gets stuck on "Selling" for the time being.

Hopefully they get it all sorted out soon, but at least we can still play!

Buy Copper Tools from Guild Wars 2Vendor

While leveling I came across resource nodes as early as level 2! Not having a Mining pick was a real bummer, so I ran to the first place I could find with farming tools.

As soon as you have completed a quest that gives you one of the three tools (you will find one after the first instanced questline), go buy the other two tools from a vendor. I purchased Copper Harvesting Sickle and Copper Logging Axe, while picking up the Copper Mining Pick from that quest I mentioned earlier. For humans I believe it was the quest where you help out on the farm killing worms, feeding cattle, and watering corn.

Once you have your tools, go out there and continue questing, but this time you'll be gathering valuable resources to sell on the Trading Post!

Also purchase Crude Salvage Kits if you can afford them. These are used to turn your discarded blue gear into valuable crafting materials.

Connection error(s) detected. Retrying...

The error message I was greeted with when attempting to log into Guild Wars 2 for the thirtieth time was: "Connection error(s) detected. Retrying..."

Here's hoping this gets fixed soon. I already lost 6 hours worth of possible game time!

Be careful buying the best gear you can find on the Trading Post while leveling. As you can probably imagine, it's going to be way overpriced.

Look, I may be new to Guild Wars 2 but I'm not new to MMO economies. When you first play one of these games, you definitely get addicted to the feeling of getting an upgrade. Often players will follow this scenario:

• Make gold during the day.
• Spend it all on upgrades at night.
• Repeat.

This is NOT the way you want to play Guild Wars 2. To stop spending so much money and start making more, you will want to reduce your expectations for upgrades. Why buy the weapon that one shots monsters when you can buy a less powerful but certainly capable weapon for half the price? You really don't NEED to buy the best of the best at each level. Nor do you need to waste all your materials crafting a bunch of gear that you'll out level by the end of the day.

Stop spending money from the very beginning and be smart about your upgrades. You will end up saving so much gold that you'll be able to buy everything you need, instead of just a few things you want along the way.

Queensdale Gold Farming Spot

Queensdale human starting area has an interesting spot for grinding bats.

I personally haven't played this spot, but I got this tip from a friend who played all the beta weekends.

As you can see it's between beggar's burrow and the dam, with hardly any "close" events, hearts, or teleporters.

In this area you can find 2 veteran bats and lots of normal bats hanging out. There are logs scattered around the area and potentially monsters in the water as well.

You could grind this spot for trophies to level up crafting.

Step #1: Play the game.
Step #2: Read about the game as much as possible on forums and news sites.
Step #3: Refine every technique.
Step #4: Try everything, even methods that appear to be guaranteed failures.
Step #5: Track every strategy's success rate.
Step #6: Pay attention to world views outside of your own.

That last one is something I really want to hone in on for today's post. Getting into the head of your opponent is a difficult thing to do. It's about as easy as understanding a foreign dialect. Every play poker? Did you ever get to the point where you could tell someone's cards based on the way they acted during an individual hand? I used to be able to tell you the actual cards, as in suite and number of my opponents when I played poker. As long as I had spent enough games watching them, then yes I could literally do this. That's the level of skill you need to acquire to dominate an MMO's economy. You gotta pick apart the brains of millions in order to determine the best time to strike.

The best way to learn about another point of view is to read the Guild Wars 2 official forums. I would recommend reading that frequently. But you also need to read the unwritten opinions of the vast majority of players.

This is the easiest example I can give and it's going to have to be theoretical for now. Look at the Trading Post and try to explain why prices go up and down during certain hours. In essence, come up with a hypothesis as to why people behave the way they do. All you have to work with is the end result, and it's your job to step into the shoes of others and give an accurate reason as to why the result occurred.

Sound too easy? Well it's not, and often you'll find yourself scrapping past hypothetical answers that you assumed had to be the reason for whatever economic occurrence you discovered.

As I wade through a massive influx of data and ideas surrounding the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post, you can be absolutely sure that I'll be trying to get into the collective heads of millions of players. All so you can dominate the economy and have fun in the process :)

Be sure to subscribe using the sign up form on the right. That way I can email you with new updates and anything that isn't getting published to the blog (like time sensitive strategies). It's a good way to stay in direct contact with me as well any time you have a question. You'll also get access to my account name, so anytime you want to whisper me in game that's an option as well.

Before I talk about buying gems, I got into the stress test last night and played a norm warrior. Definitely a fun experience, except for when every leap resulted in me dying due to some strange bug. I'd take like 1,000 fall damage every time I used leap, regardless of the distance. Then it started working again after I zoned in and out of the same area. My favorite part of the leveling up experience was running into world events. Leveling became fun and I quickly lost track of time from those battles. Did you get into the stress test last night? OK, back to the buying gems...

Buying gems early on for the purpose of obtaining gold from other players is a TERRIBLE idea. Why? Because the dollar is not going to change in value all that much, but gold will. $10 for gems will always be $10, but maybe the equivalent in gold will fluctuate greatly.

What if at some point the expenses and gold sinks within the game become trivial? If you wasted money to get gems for gold to pay for these expenses that would suck huh? The fact that so many people will be wanting gold means that the value of it will be quite high early on. Then suddenly more and more gold will enter the game, with only a small amount taken out by Trading Post fees and gold sinks. At that point, gold will inflate, and you'll get more gold for your gems than early on.

So a word of advice, don't buy gems and sell them for gold early on. Also, beware buying gems for items you are probably going to get just from playing the game. Save them for stuff you really want and know you don't have the time to acquire!

I had never considered this, but the discussion at Guild Wars 2 Forum: Bags brought up the fact that bags are pretty common within PvP chests. The natural supply of bags is starting to look a little too large for my liking. Let's see, you can get bags from PvP chests, mob drops, 3 professions out of 8, etc.

Will bags still be a great money maker? Yes, but like everything else I would recommend not putting all of your eggs into one basket. You've also got to consider that maybe lower level bags drop like candy on purpose, then later on perhaps they become far rarer, as well as the materials used to make them.

Bags could be a great money maker, but as I suggested in that thread, focus on stockpiling the materials instead of actual bags themselves. You can always just hit craft 100 bags and watch as they get created faster than bullets out of a machine gun thanks to the way Guild Wars 2 handles mass crafting.

Early on, sell what bags you can, but only create a few to list then hold on to the rest as raw materials.

The Mystic Forge can be used for a lot more than just randomly combining gear and gambling on getting something more valuable while you level. You can actually combine four dyes into a single rare one for example. There's no guarantee that you'll get a valuable dye, or a particular one you happen to be hoping for, but it definitely will be an option for attempting to acquire rare dyes.

Rare dyes can also be crafted, and this is yet another example of how Guild Wars 2 enables players to invest either time or money to obtain what they are looking for.

It's going to take some time, but eventually we'll have enough data on the forge to know the math behind how it works. At that point, we can do some number crunching and determine the cheapest way to obtain and flip rare dyes.

Regardless of how you get rare dyes, it's important to know of the market instead of overlooking dyes for things like bags, weapon, or armor.

I hear everyone talking about bags as we approach Guild Wars 2's three day head start. Most of the people toting that bags will be the biggest money makers in the game are World of Warcraft players. In WoW, bags are the easiest way to make consistent gold for crafters. The materials are rare for the middle of the road bags, since so few players are farming mobs that drop them. This leads to a situation where low level bags are actually worth significantly more than they "should" be according to their size and the size of the largest bags.

In Guild Wars 2, however, crafting bags will actually level your character. If your character can make a bag, then odds are they will while leveling as the bags seem to have really cheap materials. Initially, bags may not be huge money makers due to everyone having easy access to the materials and the fact that there's every incentive to make and use your own bags at first.

I predict that you will be able to make 4-10x as much selling bags months AFTER the initial rush to level 80. So as an opening strategy, you may want to actually buy bags and materials with whatever gold you make initially from selling them. Just keep reinvesting and stockpiling mountains of mid level materials and bags. That way you will have the WoW situation months later where bags are super valuable and the materials required to make them are scarce/valuable as well.

Keep in mind that you can very quickly turn materials into bags, so stockpile the materials wherever possible instead of just crafting tons of bags. This will enable you to sell off materials if that's more profitable as well.

So I bought this sweet Logitech mouse for Guild Wars 2 and my other gaming adventures:

Guild Wars 2 Gaming Mouse

I know it's not an official mouse for Guild Wars 2, but I certainly think that it will get the job done! Back in my World of Warcraft days, I got gladiator in season 6, and I certainly knew the headache of using a two button mouse. My hands would fly all over the keyboard, so much so that it looked like I was furiously typing messages to people whenever I battled in the arena.

Since Guild Wars 2 is so reliant on precision and less forgiving combat than Wow had, I decided to pick up an actual gaming mouse.

You may be thinking, well, how the hell does this help your Trading Post auctions?

Having some easier to use hotkeys will make me a better player and increase my reaction time just a little bit more. Less deaths, more kills, and more efficient gameplay. That will certainly help me acquire better items to auction on the Trading Post!

Have you bought any new equipment for playing Guild Wars 2? Maybe a computer, mouse, keyboard, mousepad, headset, microphone, etc? It's amazing how much you need now-a-days to play an MMO!

I was thinking about the possibility of leveling from 1 to 80 without killing anything. Since Guild Wars 2 enables you to level through crafting, it is theoretically possible to do this.

Maybe I could start off by doing a handful of quests to get a few gold, then just cut off all killing/questing to try and go from level X to 80 just by using the auction house. It would certainly make for an interesting journey, of that I'm sure!

What do you think? Perhaps it is something best left for your second level 80, instead of ruining the enjoyment of being part of the first wave of level 80's in the game?

Unless of course it's faster than killing and questing to level...

Do you have any fun plans for that initial head start? Are you thinking about playing the game slow and soaking it all in one character at a time?

So I'm curious, who exactly are YOU? I know it sounds cliche, but this is a brand new blog and I really have no idea who you are. So step into the lime light for a moment and leave a comment with who you are and what you expect from Guild Wars 2. Bonus question! If you played Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft, what do you think will make Guild Wars 2 better than those two games?

I'll go first...

I expect the game to entertain me for at least three months. I HOPE that the game will entertain me for years to come, much like WoW did previously. Just like with WoW, I intend to dissect this game like a surgeon. I'll look for loop holes and every advantage I can find with regards to the Trading Post and making gold in the game. If I find the PvP entertaining enough, then I will take it rather seriously and play more than just the Trading Post.

You probably know me already, but I have an insatiable craving for figuring out economies in games. I've already taken a swing at World of Warcraft and Diablo 3, and now I'm looking forward to a change of pace with Guild Wars 2. Will it fizzle and die like SWOTR? Hopefully not! I like the art direction and game play of Guild Wars 2, which will probably be entertaining enough to get everyone past the inevitable wave of patches and bug fixes new games have these days.

I am most excited by the lack of monetary transactions between players. I thought that it would be a great thing for Diablo 3, but in reality it did nothing but hurt the "fun" of the game. Having a measuring stick like the dollar bill next to every item you find really takes away from the joy of gaming. If you don't find enough dollars each time you play then you really feel like you wasted your time. Guild Wars 2 won't ever feel like that, mostly because Gems can only be purchases for dollars and sold for gold. Sure, you can basically buy gold with this system, but money is only going from players to the game, not players to players or the game to players.

At its core, I believe that Guild Wars 2 will be more entertaining for me than both WoW and Diablo 3.

Are you excited about Guild Wars 2 and its economy, as well as hoping that it will be more enjoyable than the recent games from Blizzard entertainment?

After the 3 day head start, players will not be lacking gold in Guild Wars 2. Why? Because of Gems. These will be used for a variety of upgrades, which you can view at the Guild Wars 2 Gem Wiki. Higher level characters who played the initial 3 day head start will purchase gems from players who pay money for them. So, in essence, the low level characters will buy gems for money and the high level characters will buy them for gold. They may not sell well during the beginning of the head start, but by day 4 they will sell like hotcakes. Especially for low level characters who don't have access to methods for making more gold, whether it be farming or crafting.

So What Will They Spend Their Gold On?

Mark my words, leveling items will be the highest profit margins of any items in Guild Wars 2. Conversely, end game items will sell against more competition with smaller profit margins.

Buy Low, Sell Normal

It's all about Buying Low and Selling Normal. That's the key to every economy I've ever played online!

With buyout orders and selling orders, it's going to be much easier to play the Buy Low, Sell Normal strategy. Just pick out an item you can mass produce (like bags) and do the following:

1. Create cheap buyout orders for your materials.
2. Craft.
3. Create sell orders at normal price for your crafted goods.

That's all there is to it! In other games, you had to rely on winning bids cheap or finding super underpriced goods to buy low and then sell normal. But in Guild Wars 2, you actually get to speak to the buyers and sellers through buyout orders. Remember, normal is just the price a player expects to pay for their item. Maybe even a little cheaper than normal.

Be Unique

So how do you distinguish yourself from the crowd of buyers and sellers? You're going to want to buy and sell like this:

Buy in huge quantities so that you can place a cheaper buyout order for the items. Players will take a hit to their profits in exchange for the opportunity to get rid of ALL their items at once.

Sell in small quantities, in the amounts that players want the specific items. For bags maybe that is four items (players start the game with 4 open bag slots).

Stay Open Minded!

Keep an open mind and remember to think like an auctioneer when Guild Wars 2 comes out. Be careful playing the gem game at first as they will have inflated prices, but instead, focus on leveling items and crafted goods.

Beware end game items! They are always going to be rife with competition and small payouts compared to your crafting materials. Focus on dozens of small, fast moving niches where you can capitalize on buy low, sell normal.

Guest post written by Ben Sanders.

Guild Wars 2 has a feature that I've only encountered in one game previously - the ability to create buy orders and sell orders. I have previously enjoyed buy orders and sell orders in Eve Online, but had to make do with an auction house for World of Warcraft and for Diablo 3, which is sort of only half the trading functionality.

Introduction - How buy and sell orders work

Sell orders are very similar to auctions that have a buyout price; anyone can see the sell order, and choose to buy at that price. Unlike auctions, one buys from the lowest buy order - with auctions, for example, you could choose to buy the overpriced ore at 27 gold instead of the cheap ore at 3 gold. With sell orders, however, your order is always fulfilled from the lowest priced sell orders.
Diablo 3 has the equivalent of sell orders for it's commodities market.

When a trader creates a sell order, the things they are selling vanish from their inventory, and (in GW2) they are charged a listing fee. The items remain on the trading post until either someone buys them, or the trader cancels the order, and gets their items back.

Buy orders, however, are where the fun starts for a trader. Instead of putting goods up on the trading post, they put up funds with an offer to buy goods at a particular price. They supply the trading post with enough money to cover the transaction.
So when someone with something to sell (a farmer, say) goes to the trading post to sell their items, they have a choice.
Either they can sell at the price of the highest buy order, and they will get money immediately (the trader has already put up the money to buy at that price). Or they can list their goods as a sell order, either choosing to undercut the current cheapest sell order to try and get a quick sale, or at a price that seems reasonable to them, because they think the existing sell orders will sell out in a reasonable amount of time.

What difference does this make to a trader?

The question of 'What is something worth?' is one that was often hard to answer with an auction house, especially if you were new to a market. You could look on the auction house, and the current auctions tell you 'Someone is willing to sell at such a price', but the problem was determining demand - sometimes no one was willing to buy at that price, and things just remained unsold auctions until they expired. As one got to know a market better, one could learn more about the demand too.

With both buy and sell orders on the trading post, even when new to that market, you get a range of prices into which an item's value falls. If there are buy orders, then the item is currently worth at least as much as the highest buy order, and if there are sell orders, it is worth no more than the cost of the buying from the sell orders.
The size of the range between the buy and sell orders (the margin) is an indication of the volume of the market; if the good is traded very frequently, the margin will tend to be smaller, with less room for profit per item. If there is a big margin, there is probably a lower volume being traded, and there is more doubt as to the fair price.

Markco's mantra was always 'Buy Cheap, Sell Normal'. Buy and sell orders give you many more opportunities to do this - the trader exchanges time for money. Instead of getting an immediate result, instead you place buy orders so that other people can immediately sell their goods, and place sell orders, so that people who are not interested in waiting for buy orders to be fulfilled, and buy things instantly.

My experiences of farmers in World of Warcraft suggest that they really like getting their money immediately, and will sometimes take a significant cut in the price they will sell at to achieve this.
Some people would make arrangements with farmers to buy any amount of certain goods at a prearranged price; I would expect this to happen much less in Guild Wars 2, because of the ability for the farmer to sell to buy orders to get immediate funds.

If you suspect that the price of something is going to go down,  with an excess of supply reducing the price, then you can preemptively place a buy order to be ready to buy that good when it is cheap.
When playing World of Warcraft, I often tried to buy ore on a Tuesday morning, as the auctions often had a low buyout then. If I had had buy orders available, I could instead have created them on Monday evenings, and the Monday night farmers would have been able to sell to me immediately. It's no longer a game of timing, but instead a game of getting the correct pricing for my buy order. As a trader, I like to think that I'm better at getting the pricing right, rather than trying to race the other traders by getting up at the right time on a Tuesday morning.

This is very similar to listing sell orders at a higher price than the current lowest sell orders, because you think the price is going to go up. We could already do this in games that just had an auction house, but having buy and sell orders allow speculation in both directions.

Thanks for reading,
Ben Sanders